Dig Collective put on an actual show

Dig Collective put on this show last night at the Lith Club in North Melbourne and I want to seize the opportunity to talk about some shit that needs to happen here. This was a good work, and Australia hasn't really seen shit like this, and no-one knew what to make about it in the audience I reckon, but its important that we talk about it for reasons outlined below. In Europe there's this idea that you can actually critique the status quo without being completely isolated and rejected from society. This idea doesn't exist in Australia, because anyone who is not like us we divide and conquer like cornelia rau or vivian solon or if you worship islam. Therefore we make theatre that is like us all the time, narrative problem solving theatre, we don't make shit that doesn't make sense. It has to make sense. "Dramaturgical sense", if you understand what that means. Right? Logical, rational sense. The problem with that is that the world doesn't make fucking sense, and so for an artist that presents a problem. Because to present a work that say, tackles the "issue" of global warming and solves it for us so we don't have to do anything, sure, that's going to make you FEEL GOOD you will go home feeling HAPPY and maybe you can go shag something with a clear conscience, but actually that's not the way the fucking world works. Lemme tell you how the world works for a second. The world works like this: you sip your latte, and at the same time a bomb goes off somewhere. You don't know about it, it doesn't affect you directly. You just sip the latte. Later you find out that the bomb went off BECAUSE YOU WERE SIPPING THE LATTE. Let's say, I dunno, there was industrial action at the coffee bean factory at Niceragua and the military stepped in or whatever. Let's say you read this in the paper while you're drinking the coffee. You stop for a sec. There's a moment where you're faced with a choice: do you admit to yourself that you have caused the bomb to go off? Or do you pretened nothing happened. You choose option B. You choose that fucking option over and over again because that's our contemporary existence, bombs going off in other places and us sipping our lattes and then ignoring shit. Until bad shit happens here, and then we crack down again on anyone who isn't white, and tell girls not to go out late at night etc. In this work there are a bunch of people and they do the same thing over and over again heaps and heaps of times, it's something about an archaic labour and its something about workplace heirarchy and its something futile because the buckets go everywhere and you have to pick them up and put in in the wheelbarrow. That happens 15 times or something, and the first time it was weird but by the 15th time its not weird anymore, its familiar like a white kitten. Other shit happens too and that also gets repeated and the whole thing is exactly like reality and then its like "suck shit we didn't do anything to help you" and everyone has to leave because it's the end of the show. And that's basically what happens, there are some bits in between where people put on good performances that aren't about anything but are of high quality and are totally committed, and then they fuck off too or knife the baby they created and its onto the next thing. In a world where our representations are supposed to be all causal and shit, causal in a way that's like "if you buy this product you will look like this" which is totally fucken stupid when you think about it but anyway, this might seems like a challenge. And it is a challenge and if you sat in the audience and laughed along then fuck you I think, because there were performers up there working hard to try and show you the kind of life we're leading and how painful and horrible it all is, and so fuck you for laughing at them. Actually they told you this themselves, but I give you also a fuck you. So what is there to be done here?? Well I think first everyone who makes latte theatre has to go to this show b/c these are performers who are actually bothering to take the time to build a performance language that doesn't have the same "Will they won't they? OH THEY DID" sort of narrative as a footy game. Oh my god Richmond came back to win by a point. Shut the fuck up who cares. And that's what we need, not more green-field placebos, someone who will actually take the time to build an audience who is able to think about shit and not just to think about buying shit. Anyway that's what I think of the show, I think it was good, I didn't understand how Josh's character knew that the little bucket was in the old bag, he seemed to know, that seemed to defy logic, the rest of it made perfect sense and I suggest everyone goes and then tries to agree that it makes perfect sense and then maybe theatre in Australia will actually get something done. For example, but there are going to be other examples I hope, because unlike the rest of you I'm not a nihilist :)